


Things That Don't, and Things That Do

by holyfant



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things that no longer happen to John after the fall. And some that do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Don't, and Things That Do

**Things That Don't**

i. He no longer gets up in the morning with a light feeling in his stomach, a lightness he tried not to like too much, a small point of giddiness at a day unplanned, sprawled out before him like an unwalked path. He no longer gets up in the morning and spends a couple of mercifully calm seconds listening in to hear if Sherlock is up and trying to think of whatever it might be that will fall into their laps today. He no longer gets up, creeps to the bathroom and counts the minutes in the shower until Sherlock starts banging on the door, telling him to get on with it already, because personal hygiene is, though something Sherlock practices surprisingly systematically, not something that should take so damn long when the city is waiting outside, morning-fresh, a great, London-sized crime scene in the making. He no longer gets up in the morning and is surprised every single time, sometimes at how silent the flat can be when Sherlock is finally sleeping, more often at how he finds Sherlock – having tied himself to a chair with mind-boggling flexibility just to see how long it would take to get free, or hair flying like a mad scientist, poring over concoctions that bubble and steam and thoroughly ruin breakfast, or half-naked, manic, falling into a conversation with him that tells John he's been talking to him for far longer than John has been awake – or less often, but still sometimes, surprised at Sherlock's own particular brand of affection: amidst the chaos of the table, two pieces of impossibly still warm, completely blackened, utterly inedible toast on a relatively clean plate, the newspaper folded open on an article about a promising new vaccine that John had been talking about, in the margins of which Sherlock has written _this is all wrong, this formula isn't correct, this is wishful thinking, HAH!, no, WRONG_ , and then at the bottom: _John, exercise more precaution while reading about this kind of pseudo-science in the future_ ; his coat already waiting on the chair, folded over it in a way that manages to be expectant; an empty cup of tea that John knows Sherlock made for him but then forgot about and drank himself; a grocery list on which in his spidery handwriting Sherlock has written under John's own mundane tea, biscuits, milk, bread, jam and frozen pizza, _nitric acid (for an experiment, not for eating)_.

ii. He no longer gets picked up by sleek dark cars exuding mystery. He no longer tries to chat up unapproachable personal assistants who have merged with their smartphones. He no longer gets talked at by Mycroft Holmes – because he never really talked _with_ Mycroft Holmes anyway; Mycroft had a similar kind of communicative malfunctioning his brother had. (But then Sherlock's malfunctioning fit quite well with John's. They were both just volatile enough in their moods to switch around each other, to circle each other, Sherlock talking too much when John was too silent, and Sherlock shutting John out when John really wanted to talk, until they came head to head and bashed at each other with the hardness, the resistance of skulls, and that shouldn't have worked but it did, in a way that it no longer does, for obvious reasons). So Sherlock and he were almost okay most of the time in their communication, never completely, nothing Sherlock was ever completely okay, but almost okay, even if it often took explosions literal and proverbial, while Mycroft was always just a well-dressed block of ice with an impeccable accent. He no longer has anything to do with the top-tiers of his country's government, and sometimes he thinks that's just as well, because he really, honestly, would want to undermine Britain from the inside out sometimes, bring it to its knees, make it beg, destroy it – this place that builds its heroes up and then tears them down with abandon, tramples on them, chews on them with a slow glee that is not over, not even now.

iii. He no longer expects to be attacked on the street. He no longer rounds street corners and braces himself, muscles ready to spring to attention. He no longer feels danger in dark alleyways – or at least not the same kind of danger, a danger he felt he could handle, a danger that Sherlock's stretched-out presence gave him a grip on. He no longer keeps his gun in his pocket; he did for a while, until it became so heavy, so laden with meaning, that he started wondering if he was maybe a bit suicidal and locked it away. He's no longer sure he wasn't a bit suicidal those first months, just as he's no longer sure who Sherlock was, if he was more than a bit suicidal for – presumably – more than a few months, and John never knew.

iv. He's no longer sure who he himself was and is, if Sherlock was more than a bit suicidal for – presumably – more than a few months, and John never knew.

v. He's no longer sure who either of them was, and what they were together.

vi. He no longer feels as though life has things to offer that last longer than just a moment. The things that last a moment have returned; something of himself has returned to the shell of his skin, it's been thirteen months since _keep your eyes fixed on me, please, will you do this for me_ and he's not shrivelling up anymore like he was for the longest time. He once more has tea with Mrs. Hudson and he has patients that are grateful and silly and stupid and insightful and plain and pretty and ugly and living and dying and he has a stilted e-mail correspondence with Greg and he has a strange kind of bond with Molly that she with a surprising insistence took up after _keep your eyes fixed on me_ (and he didn't want any of it at first, he didn't want to keep his eyes fixed on anyone else, ever again, but after a while, surprisingly, he was still human and his eyes were dry and torn and aching for someone else to fix on). He has that. He just no longer has the feeling that there is more to life than the temporary pleasure of beer swishing around in his mouth or a particularly satisfying book on Saturday evening, one that is so unlike life, with such a neat development, with such a well-delivered arc of tension that never exists in actual life that he can't help but like it. He no longer believes that the world requires saving, because it's the world (and the world, the world is its people, of course) that endangers itself, and he no longer believes it deserves saving. If it brought the person who gave his life to save it to his knees, to his head, to his cracked skull on pavement, then it doesn't deserve anything anymore.

vii. He no longer falls asleep on the couch, because that only happened after staying up with Sherlock for far longer than the stretch of day and night. He no longer hears Sherlock continuing to talk to him while he's slipping into sleep, and he no longer hears the small hitch in Sherlock's voice as he realises John is dropping off, and then continuing, just a fraction more softly, a switch of voice that filtered into his dreams, a low murmur, Sherlock narrating his sleep. He no longer wakes up on the couch with an aching neck and cracking joints, cursing himself and his age, and then getting up and realising the couch is warm at his feet, and that Sherlock must have been sitting there not long ago.

viii. He no longer waits for a couple of minutes to finish a cup of tea after the first sip, surreptitiously checking himself for signs of being drugged. He no longer thinks he would mind being drugged. He no longer drags his finger over a plate before putting food on it and examining it under Sherlock's microscope if it's not in use. He no longer wonders at the taste of defrosted frozen pizza on a plate that hasn't been properly washed in six days. He's no longer interested in addiction, except in a destructive sense that he keeps carefully under wraps, because he can't let it win. He no longer checks anyone's pulse except for when he has to at the clinic; he no longer checks his own, because it is traitorously, horribly steady, resisting the gravity that he sometimes feels as though he is the one who took the jump, pushing his life back upward, transporting everything that Sherlock thought immaterial, just transport, literally. He no longer checks anyone else's except, with a disgust he wishes wasn't there, his patients', because he checked Sherlock's, and it wasn't there, there was no flutter of body, of physicality, and he wishes Sherlock wasn't proven wrong in that moment, because Sherlock should never have been proven wrong ever again; not just transport, because without it, nothing nothing nothing nothing. He no longer likes how blood jumps under his fingers with a reckless abandon, with a sincerity that only the body has – he no longer likes it because Sherlock's body didn't strain up to meet him, the skin of his wrist was still warm, his body didn't quite know it yet, the blood was still fighting, but only to get out, not to stay inside, it was abandoning ship, it was pure betrayal, and it's all wrong.

ix. He no longer loves London. He wishes it wasn't so, but it is. The city, evening-dank, now smells of stifled laughter, suppressed gossip, _did you hear that about Sherlock Holmes_ and the city doesn't have the right to Sherlock's name anymore, it doesn't deserve it, it didn't have its eyes fixed on him when he needed it, when he said _please, will you do this for me_ and no one listened except for John and then later when Sherlock needed nothing anymore the city picked at him and stared at him until he was pulled apart fibre by fibre, his name pronounced by too many gloating mouths, his eyes stretched over too many tv screens. No, he no longer loves London; Sherlock taught him to love London even more than he already did, because it was a pulsing heart, a black hole pulling, a crime scene, a growing case spilling out of its own borders, but now? No. There is a fraud and it isn't Sherlock. The maze has yielded its secret, and it is: we don't care. Well, he no longer cares in return, fiercely, hatefully, and he wishes he could do more.

x. Everything.

 

**Things That Do**

i. He gets up in the morning and knows what his day will hold.

ii. He watches dark, sleek cars and wants to set fire to them.

iii. He walks past dark alleyways like black holes and does nothing, except push his hands deeper in his pocket and accepts the heavy feeling of ignorance. He thinks, unbearably, uncontrollably, about Sherlock and what kind of man he was or must have been. He replays that moment before John stormed off to Mrs. Hudson – unharmed, undead, living, breathing, and ohchristno – so many times it's entirely possible he's changed things about the memory; it feels brittle, ready to crack, overhandled, overheated, jumping away at his touch like a shy new pet. _Alone is what protects me,_ and no, that can't have been real, but he's not Sherlock and he doesn't crack the code. And when he thinks about himself, and how he proclaimed _friends is what protects people_ before falling into precisely the wrong crack, the wrong abyss, going after the wrong friend, and it feels terrible but that's how it is: the wrong friend, he tries not to think about what Sherlock might have said to him in his absence, the way that Sherlock often talked to him while he was away. When he wants to hurt himself he does think about it, and imagines the whole conversation, but he's not an artist, he's not a writer, he can barely string enough words together to get a coherent blog entry out, he can't come up with anything witty and snippy and melodious in Sherlock's low baritone; he can only think of _when I need you to say something back most desperately, you're not here, John_. And when he wants to hurt himself, he does, just by saying that to himself, and standing on the sofa, and pushing his face against the bullet-marked smiley on the wall, and cries until the wall paper is stuck to his cheeks and it's like pulling off his face when he finally unsticks himself from the wall.

iv. He wonders at himself, at what kind of man he is, as he does nothing except rip the newpapers apart and press Greg for access to the tapes of the interviews and the recordings of Sherlock's final call – Greg can't do anything, of course, because Greg got sacked, Greg is a traffic conductor now, and his e-mails grow increasingly clipped. John keeps pushing at him, and he fears it's precisely because Greg can never get him what he wants, and he wants someone else to feel helpless, and he also wants to never, ever hear that phone call again, so strongly that he'd throw the file out of the window if it ever did end up on his desk. He hears the phone call again, not every night now like in the beginning, but still far too often. He hears the worst sound, winning every time to close second _please, will you do this for me_ and close third _it's all true_ : that small laugh that Sherlock gave when John said _you could_ (you could, _you_ could, Sherlock, you could be so clever, you are, you're not a fake, you never were, you are so many things but not fake, and you're not up there, you're not teetering on that edge, you're not suicidal, you aren't or I would have seen it, you can't be, _I know you for real_ , don't prove me wrong, don't prove yourself wrong, don't prove your body wrong, don't prove anything wrong for once, let it be, step back down, come back to me, let it go for once, don't make your point, explain it to me this once, don't leave me in the dark, bring me with you on this track, share yourself with me for once, and if you still want to die then at least let me come up there with you, don't let there be this much air between us, don't put your hand out there if you can't take mine, don't look down on me as you always have because you're so fucking tall and if you still want it then tell me _please, will you do this for me_ and I will, you already know I will). That small chuckle, it's in his dreams sometimes, always out of place. He knows he's not who he was.

v. He can't help it, he thinks about them together. The extent of his grief became worrying as soon as he regained a modicum of control over his depression, but that was six months in, and with any patient he would have suggested a medical treatment by then, tranquillizers, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety concoctions, sleeping pills – anything, because the instability of a patient like that would have worried him deeply, he would have talked to a family member if there was one and have inquired carefully after the nature of the relationship with the deceased, and all that would be able to explain it is _loved 'er, 'e did, loved 'er like she was a rope thrown down a well where he got stuck or sumfink_ and he'd nod to that, because that's the only thing that could explain the depth of the waves of despair rolling off this patient. And he's never been good at fooling himself, so he applies it to himself just as rigorously, his professional concern, as soon as he regains the ability to be professional. He doesn't take any pills, though, and now thinks that maybe he will never suggest any for his patients again unless they put out their hands at him and ask him with tears in their eyes. He already knew he loved Sherlock; a friendship like one he'd never had, a friendship that changed his life, that made him bigger than he had ever been, and then so many moments in which there was genuine danger for them and each time the shocking realisation that he really, honestly couldn't bear to lose Sherlock, and a strange co-dependency that was forming itself between them (like how he sometimes got worried when Sherlock didn't text him during a date and then he broke off the date anyway and went home without provocation just to see whether Sherlock was all right; or how Sherlock always, always stayed up when he was out – not that strange for Sherlock, but he usually went to bed as soon as John was home when he wasn't on a case, or at least went to his room, and once in a rare moment of early-morning, late-night sincerity he had said that John's presence helped him to organise his thoughts, and John knew that to be the biggest compliment he had ever been paid by anyone; or how Sherlock never really touched him, except when they had been in danger, and then he could sometimes be a nuisance, hovering too close, those eyes too intent, trying to catch further signs of danger, maybe, of John's body giving up even after it was over, and John let him, because he genuinely didn't mind, and he liked it when Sherlock grabbed him by the shoulder, because it gave him something of a focusing point). He also knew Sherlock loved him, in a Sherlock-way, a way that was evidenced by the way Sherlock knew John didn't really, not deep down, object to being experimented upon, and by the way Sherlock also knew that John did still mind a little, so he gave John a chance to want to talk and maybe be angry and then things would be okay again. It was evidenced by the way Sherlock never felt the need to mince his words for John, which is the most genuine thing Sherlock could do for him. And then most cruelly it was evidenced by _this phone call, it's my note_ , because although he then said _that's what people do, don't they_ it definitely wasn't what people do, people don't call someone and tell them to stay there while they plunge to their deaths, but Sherlock did because Sherlock is Sherlock and he called John, he called John because he needed someone to look at him and, not just someone, John: _keep your eyes fixed on me, will you do this for me, please_. The fact that Sherlock loved him is evidenced by the fact that Sherlock knew John would do it for him. Sometimes he hates Sherlock. And he's not sure what to do with any of it; the good-natured or mean-spirited suggestions from everyone they met – if you'll be needing two bedrooms; is yours a snorer; live-in PA; jealous?; yes you are; a _friend_? - always had his hackles raising, because it was so crude, so simple, to suggest that Sherlock and him had to be sleeping together just for it to make sense, as if there could be no other reason John lived with Sherlock. There were other reasons. And sleeping together wasn't a reason because it never happened, not really; Sherlock sometimes kissed him after cases, yes, when he was in a strange limbo between mania and exhaustion – and well, kissed isn't really right, because it was more of an extension of that urge to touch John after danger, it's like looking at him just wasn't enough to make sure he was really there and he had to make sure with his body. Those were the only moments John can recall when Sherlock trusted his touch more than his other senses, relied on physicality instead of mentality. And that was special in itself, because John didn't think he ever let his guard slip to that extent with anyone else, and John didn't mind because he wanted Sherlock to know that he wasn't going anywhere; it was certainly sexual at times for him, but he doesn't think it ever was for Sherlock. He agonised over that for quite a while until it simply became something that was between them, an item in the long list of strange things between them, nestled comfortably between things like _Sherlock talks to John when John is gone_ and _John eats his eggs scrambled now, because Sherlock likes them that way on the rare occasions when he eats, and John wants him to eat more often_ and _Sherlock often listens at John's door when he thinks John is sleeping, and John only knows this because he's not always sleeping_ and _John sometimes checks Sherlock's pulse when Sherlock is finally asleep after sixty hours of thinking and then allows his hand to stay there for far longer than a pulse-taking requires_ and _John and Sherlock are very attuned to each other's pace of running, even with Sherlock's legs being so much longer, and it works, even when they're not handcuffed together_ and _John knows Sherlock could have picked them out of that handcuff on that night of betrayal in a matter of seconds, but he's glad he didn't, and he's glad for the 'take my hand', because it was a night of betrayal and they didn't need any more_ and, well, there's so much more, and it suggested to everyone else that they were shagging, and sometimes it suggested it to John as well until he remembered that they weren't. He genuinely thinks he might have kissed Sherlock's face after the jump if someone hadn't been pulling him away, but he can't know, because it wasn't a possibility, and you can never be sure about such things. He thinks about the phone call when he wants to hurt himself, face pushed against the wall, and wonders, painfully, if Sherlock might have paused if John had said _come down or let me come up at least, so I can kiss you one last time, please, will you do this for me, I will do what you ask after that, but please let me do that_ but John was so frozen in his horror that it only occurred to him later. And now he regrets, he regrets everything, but also that he didn't kiss Sherlock a last time, and also not really a first time because he never initiated the kissing; he didn't know if Sherlock wanted him to, and he didn't know if it meant the same thing to them, and that's another thing he regrets.

vi. He has tea with Mrs. Hudson, and plays cards with Molly, and invites Greg to the pub for a pint to apologise and tries hard not to press him for access to Sherlock's file.

vii. He sleeps in his bed and dreams of Sherlock with a clarity Sherlock didn't really have in life.

viii. He drinks tea, too-hot, scalding because he doesn't wait to drink it anymore. He lets his fingers rest on his patients' pulses but takes them away as soon as he knows enough, because the only person whose pulse he continued to feel for when he already knew it was there, and later, cruelly, that it wasn't, was Sherlock, and none of them deserve it, none of them deserve any of the things he did for Sherlock.

ix. He hates London.

x. Nothing.


End file.
